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Why does God let his people go through what feels like senseless suffering? I feel woefully inadequate to speak to this subject, as any suffering I have experienced pales in comparison to the trials many other Christians have faced. However, I have heard over and over from well-meaning believers “we just can’t know what God is doing when we suffer.” While this is true in the specific sense, as God usually does not show us all He is doing through a difficult situation, the Bible has some very good answers to this question in a broader sense that we should be looking at.
God tells us that He works all things together for the good of those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28). When we are suffering and we hear that, it can be easy to scoff. How does God intend to work my mother’s death for good? How can I do anything good while I’m unable to get out of bed because of cancer? While God often only gives us glimpses of what He is doing, He is working. These are some of the ways how.
1. God is revealing what is in our own hearts
Recently, my husband, George, went through a prolonged health issue with his lungs where he had chronic, sometimes debilitating, bouts of pain in his chest and periodically struggled to breathe. The months of going to specialists and waking up in the night terrified that he had stopped breathing felt endless. During this time, I was more short-tempered and impatient than I had ever been in our marriage as I felt the mounting pressure to control things I couldn’t control. I grew frustrated at God for letting George go through what felt like senseless suffering. Suffering for Christ’s sake? Sure, I could understand that. But why this needless suffering? However, as George and I prayed and talked with wise mentors from our church, we realized that God was using this situation to allow us to see sin in our hearts that we did not know were there. For myself, the delusion that I was a good and patient person was shattered as selfishness reared its head when some of my comfort was removed. My tendency to idolize control was laid bare as I realized how much I failed to depend on Christ. God could not work in these areas until He showed me how much I needed Him to work on them. We all idolize different things, perhaps our health, our money, our relationships, or our jobs. Jesus tells us that “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil” (Luke 6:45). We all have a lot more sin than we think, and God lets this sin produce its fruit when we go through trials to show us what is really in our hearts.
2. God is preparing us to endure
Romans 5 was a passage George and I memorized during these difficult months of health struggles and I go back to it often. Romans 5:3 says, “but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.” This is a lesson that we usually don’t want to learn because learning to endure means having to actually endure something. We can’t learn these lessons by studying about enduring. We have to go through difficult times. Endurance is a lesson we learn over and over as we face new, difficult situations. God teaches us to be faithful through small trials so that we are ready to handle bigger things we will have to face. This might not be encouraging, thinking of more difficult things ahead, but if you had to face the things ahead without God preparing you, you would be destroyed. Instead, “when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Eph 6:13).
3. God is giving us the chance to grow in character
Romans 5:4 continues “and endurance produces character.” I recently had one girl I mentor ask me, “how do I grow in the area of selflessness?” I told her, “pray that God will put you in areas where you will be forced to lay down what you want.” It wasn’t a very appealing idea to her. And understandably so. Like growing in endurance, growing in character can only be accomplished when we are in the actual fight. We can’t philosophize our way to the character. It is built, brick by brick, as we experience difficulty. During the COVID lockdowns, I’ve often felt the stir craziness start to get to me. The other day I caught myself thinking, “once these lockdowns are over, I will get over this irritableness.” And then I realized that, no, God is giving me the chance to grow now and to learn to be patient and loving to George even when the situation we are in isn’t ideal. This is an opportunity I can’t miss. God is producing character in me.
4. God is teaching us to truly understand that Christ is our only hope
Romans 5:4-5 continues “and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” When we are in trials, and God builds endurance and character, He does this primarily by teaching us to rely on Christ rather than on ourselves. Trials give us a new understanding that Christ is our only hope and we get to experience the sweet intimacy of having fought through a battle side by side with Him. This hope will never put us to shame because it is eternal and unchanging. After George and I realized what God was doing in our hearts through George’s health struggles, we came to a deepened understanding of the hope we had in Christ, for the first time being able to say, “no matter what happens, God is still good.”
5. God is encouraging his church
Paul tells the Philippians that “because of [his] chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear” (Phil 1:14). When we suffer and endure it well, other believers who are fearful of the things that we are going through are deeply encouraged. George and I were recently talking with a friend and he told us, “I don’t want to be in a church under a pastor who hasn’t suffered.” This might sound bizarre and a little disturbing, but what he meant was that a pastor who hasn’t suffered hasn’t built the kind of character required to lead and also will have trouble speaking into the lives of those who are having their faith adamantly tested. However, when we as believers have suffered, we are able to encourage our fellow believers that they truly can find hope in God by our testimony of endurance.
6. God is showing the world how his people suffer
I just finished reading “The Hiding Place” the story of Corrie and Betsy ten Boom, two Dutch sisters who were put in a German concentration camp for hiding Jews during WWII. I was brought to tears multiple times by the selfless way that these two women underwent suffering while pointing their fellow captives to God. Despite suffering as much as those around them, they served their fellow captives and gave away almost everything they had to them. The other captives were drawn to them, and, with a smuggled Bible, the two sisters were able to lead a Bible study that soon nearly all the women in their barracks were sneaking out of their bunks to join. Betsy and Corrie found reasons to thank God for everything, even the fleas, because they kept the guards from coming into their barracks and seeing the Bible studies. The faithful way they suffered brought hundreds to Christ. Paul wrote to Timothy that he must be faithful to the truth and “share in suffering for the gospel, for the power of God” (2 Tim 1:8). Timothy’s suffering was to be “for the power of God” bringing glory to his name. When we suffer, but suffer differently from the world, it is a strong declaration of our faithfulness to God. When we do not remain in self-pity, but rather love lavishly, there can hardly be a more powerful statement to the world that Christ is our all in all. In our suffering, His name is glorified.
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